– Jeanne Mackenzie reporting –
In this series, plein air painter and instructor Jeanne Mackenzie takes a look at new paintings by contemporary artists and points out why they succeed as painted images. This week, Valérie Pirlot’s “Cold Winter Day, Alexandra Park.”
Lead Image: “Cold Winter Day, Alexandra Park,” by Valérie Pirlot, oil on board, 10 x 8 in.
From a distance, this painting tells a story with a lot of detail — parks, buildings, roads, hills, trees. But as you look closer, you see that the story is told with eclectic spots of color and shapes. The viewer loves to fill in the rest of the story with information that they bring to the painting. As simple as this application of paint seems, it is difficult for an artist to just leave well enough alone when it comes to detail. We want to make it more real with windows and branches and cars. That can often have the opposite effect. This is a beautiful example of ‘less is more.’”
